mokspam - Tumblr blog

[mokspam]

Hey all, you know how internet searches suck now? When the results are awful, full-of-AI, death-of-the-internet levels of bad?

Start appending date constraints to your searches - "before:2023".

My results have gone from 90% AI bullshit to ~60% usable - which frankly at this point is a huge improvement.

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Oh and if literal grass-touching IS viable, I also advocate for touching invasive grass. Many parks in the US have invasive plant removal volunteer work days. You get some air and some exercise and you can talk to other volunteers if you want or you can just march off into the trees on your own and start wreaking havoc with various hand tools. If you want to do something that is both useful AND destructive, I have found nothing better

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Source

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Great eared nightjar

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Ok but like. What the fuck is there to do on the internet anymore?

Idk when I was younger, you could just go and go and find exciting new websites full of whatever cool things you wanted to explore. An overabundance of ways to occupy your time online.

Now, it’s just… Social media. That’s it. Social media and news sites. And I’m tired of social media and I’m tired of the news.

Am I just like completely inept at finding new things or has the internet just fallen apart that much with the problems of SEO and web 3.0 turning everything into a same-site prison?

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I found an extremely dope disability survival guide for those who are homebound, bedbound, in need of disability accommodations, or would otherwise like resources for how to manage your life as a disabled person. (Link is safe)

It has some great articles and resources and while written by people with ME/CFS, it keeps all disabilities in mind. A lot of it is specific to the USA but even if you're from somewhere else, there are many guides that can still help you. Some really good ones are:

How to live a great disabled life- A guide full of resources to make your life easier and probably the best place to start (including links to some of the below resources). Everything from applying for good quality affordable housing to getting free transportation, affordable medication, how to get enough food stamps, how to get a free phone that doesn't suck, how to find housemates and caregivers, how to be homebound, support groups and Facebook pages (including for specific illnesses), how to help with social change from home, and so many more.

Turning a "no" into a "yes"- A guide on what to say when denied for disability aid/accommodations of many types, particularly over the phone. "Never take no for an answer over the phone. If you have not been turned down in writing, you have not been turned down. Period."

How to be poor in America- A very expansive and helpful guide including things from a directory to find your nearest food bank to resources for getting free home modifications, how to get cheap or free eye and dental care, extremely cheap internet, and financial assistance with vet bills

How to be homebound- This is pretty helpful even if you're not homebound. It includes guides on how to save spoons, getting free and low cost transportation, disability resources in your area, home meals, how to have fun/keep busy while in bed, and a severe bedbound activity master list which includes a link to an audio version of the list on Soundcloud

Master List of Disability Accommodation Letters For Housing- Guides on how to request accommodations and housing as well as your rights, laws, and prewritten sample letters to help you get whatever you need. Includes information on how to request additional bedrooms, stop evictions, request meetings via phone, mail, and email if you can't in person, what you can do if a request is denied, and many other helpful guides

Special Laws to Help Domestic Violence Survivors (Vouchers & Low Income Housing)- Protections, laws, and housing rights for survivors of DV (any gender), and how to get support and protection under the VAWA laws to help you and/or loved ones receive housing and assistance

Dealing With Debt & Disability- Information to assist with debt including student loans, medical debt, how to deal with debt collectors as well as an article with a step by step guide that helped the author cut her overwhelming medical bills by 80%!

There are so many more articles, guides, and tools here that have helped a lot of people. And there are a lot of rights, resources, and protections that people don't know they have and guides that can help you manage your life as a disabled person regardless of income, energy levels, and other factors.

Please boost!

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I love trains. I love buses. I love getting somewhere without driving. But I live in suburban USA and.

There was a period of 3 months in which I didn't have a car. I walked half an hour each morning to the train, which would take me close enough to work that I could walk another 20 minutes and get to my office.

Four separate days I called my boss from the station to tell him I'd be an hour late because two scheduled trains simply didn't show up. About every other week I was an hour late getting home because trains just. Didn't show. Then finally an extremely short train would arrive to pick up a hundred people that have been collecting for an hour and a half while there were no trains. We would cram in, way over capacity, breathing down each other's necks and fighting to get out when our stop came. And the air conditioner was broken and it was over 100 degrees outside.

Another time, I'd planned to take the bus to an appointment after work. But there was an alert on my phone: bus is 20 minutes late due to traffic on a road that is notorious for daily horrendous traffic, as if traffic were an exceptional circumstance. Ok, I had an extra 20 minutes, but as time went on and there was STILL no ETA I was forced to call an Uber so I wouldn't be late.

I recently attempted to take public transit to a theater show, but I would get out of the show at 9:30 and the local trains stopped operating at 9 on Fridays and the bus would get me home at MIDNIGHT even though the drive was 20 minutes. Driving was my only option.

Every time I think about taking public transit, because I hate driving with a passion, I'm forced to consider the roll of the dice. Will I get stranded? How willing was I to be crammed into a traincar with strangers today? Do I have a backup plan in case the bus breaks down? Is my phone charged and ready to call an Uber? Do I have to be anywhere at a particular time?

Deep, humbled respect to everyone who uses public transit regularly and deals with this shit on a daily basis in USA. Anytime anyone proposes pouring more money into public transit I am THERE with my vote, because this is a disgrace.

How public transportation can reduce congestion

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why is everyone moving to bluesky. stop doing that. why would twitter 2 be a better decision than twitter 1 was.

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cohost dot org is a new website

cohost is a lot like tumblr. you can have a blog, you can reblog things.

cohost is also a lot NOT like tumblr. it's explicitly anti-algorithm, no ads, and extremely transparent.

it's made by some friends of mine, and right now it's invite-only, but you can also make an account and you're put into a queue that's activated as the site scales up. I think it's a really cool project and I'm going to be on there more and more, i think.

it's totally free, and the culture is still starting, but there is some real top-tier Posting going on. you can check out the cohost twitter account for more information, but i really think this is gonna Be Something.

if we're mutuals feel free to reach out for an invite code, i have a few more saved up. (update signup is totally open now) the site's good, i love it, and i'm way less worried about some of the dumb shit that circles around sites like tumblr or twitter. for one thing, they're actively doing all these things:

i trust these folks, and i think the site's good. i think more people should be on it, and if you're used to tumblr you'll probably like cohost.

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I'm by no means an expert, but after studying and trying to practice sustainable living for the past month I have thoughts and questions.

Boycott Companies with Bad Practices I think is completely misguided. Those companies do not know nor care that you boycott their products. Support companies trying to do the right thing seems far more impactful. Refusing to buy that one deforestation-happy toilet paper brand will make absolutely zero difference. Buying that toilet paper made of recycled paper helps that business grow-- and maybe eventually compete with the deforesting brands. Same thing with Fair Trade and sustainable ingredients. Support those small businesses making a difference.

Plastics end up in the ocean is also misleading. The un-recyclable plastics that are properly disposed of in your trash can will go to a landfill, not the ocean. The issue seems to actually be with unnecessary waste taking up landfill space, chemicals released by degraded plastic, and escaping microplastics. Personally, just sticking a label on the trash can "DUMP IN LANDFILL" makes me reconsider what I'm throwing away, no turtles needed.

Buy reusable products but use less water and energy sometimes seems like you can't have both. You could buy paper coffee filters and contribute to paper waste or you could buy a cloth coffee filter and have to use extra water every day rinsing it out and build up coffee grounds in your sink drain. Instead of throwing out those paper towels, I'm rinsing the dishcloths. I actually really love my cloth menstrual pads but they need to be hand washed daily. These and similar products means I've been using a lot more water than before. Is it worth it? Probably, yeah, but I'm aware of the tradeoff.

Stop using paper towels and plastic wrap has been the biggest game changer for me. Tea towels, Swedish dishcloths, and beeswax wrap have ended my dependence on paper towels, and I haven't touched the roll of plastic wrap in a month. I've even dedicated a dishcloth to my watercolor painting.

Don't drive if you don't have to is great and I try to practice it as much as possible. If it takes half an hour or less to walk, and I don't have to haul anything, I'll walk. If there's a convenient bus or train, even better. But the public transportation is so bad around here that a trip that would take 15 minutes by car takes three hours by bus. Once I tried to take the bus to an appointment and it was so badly delayed I had to call an Uber to make it in time. I was an hour late to work once because my train simply didn't arrive. I am so lucky and grateful to have access to a car, and I have massive respect for anyone who has mastered the art of the bus schedule.

Recycling plastic bags and food wrap has massively reduced the amount of plastic I drop in the trash. It's insane how much store drop offs will accept. I use a backpack daily, so I just stuff the backpack with the plastic bags and wraps as I use them, then stuff them in the reusable shopping bag when I go to the store.

Recycling electronics has also been a recent amazing discovery. Staples specifically will take a ton of electronics-related stuff for recycling. This is stuff that's been sitting in my closet because I didn't know what to do with it. They'll even take dried out markers and batteries.

Buy used stuff is great-- my favorite bowls and mugs that've lasted forever were from a thrift store --but some things just shouldn't come used, like cookware and headphones. The next best thing is stuff that's made of sustainable materials, which loops back to supporting companies doing the right thing.

Think like a Vegan has also expanded my recipe repertoire. The horrors that animals endure plus the climate impact of livestock, compiled with actual health problems from eating meat is enough to make me consider how important that cheeseburger is when I actually really love letils and rice (in a tortilla with tomatoes and spinach with hummus and salsa). I do still occasionally have eggs and cheese, and will eat meat if it is given to me, but I've significantly reduced my meat intake and I think I feel better for it.

So, the verdict?

I've spent a lot of money in the last month. Sustainable and reusable stuff is expensive -- but then, I shouldn't have to buy any more of it for the foreseeable future. I've been very occupied planning trips and mapping bus routes and scouring local shops for carob powder (which has become an obsession to find, like a scavenger hunt) and in the process found some parks and theaters on convenient routes that I've never been to. Cutting a lot of the meat and animal products, especially switching to oatmilk, has totally resolved my bloating problems and I seriously feel like I have more energy.

Most importantly, at least for me, is that I'm challenging myself to do things in a different way, to have adventures I wouldn't otherwise participate in, and to be aware of the outside world. I'm not saving the earth by using recycled toilet paper. I'm not even saving a tree, technically. But I'm more aware of what has to happen to get these products into my hands, which is an awareness of the world's contribution to my little space. And that, I think, is worth the effort.

[mokspam]

strap in folks it's time for another neopets drama update

some background reading before we begin: back when neopets wanted to introduce customisation (i.e. dressing up your pet) in 2007, they decided to 'convert' all existing pet art to align with a rigid body structure, rather than all having unique poses. it was just not feasible to create new pieces of art for hundreds of different pet poses every single time they released a new clothing them

customisation had been highly requested up until this point. however, the conversion was NOT popular. in some cases, particularly for basic colours, the change wasn't huge, but in other cases.... uh....

you get the idea. the more expensive colours like plushie, faerie, grey, royal and darigan got the worst of it because they had the more unique poses pre-conversion, and therefore it was largely agreed that the change to the stiff 'samey', frankly kinda goofy converted look did not look great

most users did not get a choice in having their neopet converted and it was done automatically, but if you had one of these colours where the change was huge, you were given the choice of converting or retaining the old pose (but not having the option to customise your pet). those pets that retained the old, pre-conversion poses are therefore referred to as 'unconverted', or UC for short

once a pet is converted, there's no returning to UC. you also couldn't create UC pets anymore, making UCs a limited resource that would only increase in value with time, particularly as people abandon their pets, leave the site, get frozen, etc.

i could write an entire dissertation on the drama that UC pets have caused for the pet trading economy, the neopet account black market, and general retention of the userbase, but to sum it up, people REALLY want UC pets. they are the single most coveted status symbol on the site

we skip forward now to 2023

the neopets team are planning to introduce UC pets back to the site, so that people will be able to create their own UC pets again for the first time post-converstion (legally at least)

they drip feed bits of information over the year about what this will look like. the main points are

changing a pet to UC will be done via some kind of item bought with neocash, the premium currency on neopets that you need to spend real money to get

putting this item on your pet will give it the UC art style appearance

so. not much really known. but expected release is set for january 2024

yesterday, they hosted an AMA focusing on the new UC pet system and how this was going to work. noticeably absent is any explanation of how much this is actually going to cost and whether it is going to involve any kind of gatcha mechanic, so that's causing our first lot of concern

second lot of drama is that the new UCs aren't actually going to be COMPLETELY the same as the old art, as they're making some small changes for style consistency, see below (old on top, new below):

the biggest drama, however, comes from how they're dealing with the 'original' UC pets. ALL pets will be getting forcibly converted on the 23rd, with anyone who has a pet that is already an original UC immediately receiving the UC neocash item. there's mention of possibly some kind of trophy or badge recognition for particularly old pets, but it's vague, and generally seems like it won't be possible to distinguish between the original UCs and these new ones

the people who already have OCs are not happy about this

people are allegedly pounding their pets, cancelling their premium, and quitting the site in protest. the boards are flooded with people complaining about the changes and laughing at the downfall of the 'neo-elite' in equal measure

it's t-minus 5 days until the second great conversion goes live. let's all pray for our souls

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I AM SORRY I CANNOT RETURN YOUR EMAIL AT THIS TIME. am in a cave

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People with low spoons, someone just recommended this cookbook to me, so I thought I’d pass it on.

I always look at cookbooks for people who have no energy/time to do elaborate meal preparations, and roll my eyes. Like, you want me to stay on my feet for long enough to prepare 15 different ingredients from scratch, and use 5 different pots and pans, when I have chronic fatigue and no dishwasher?

These people seem to get it, though. It’s very simple in places. It’s basically the cookbook for people who think, ‘I’m really bored of those same five low-spoons meals I eat, but I can’t think of anything else to cook that won’t exhaust me’. And it’s free!

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Legend has it she still flops around ireland👀

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One absolutely hilarious part of human existence is the repeated incidents of spicy bananas. People who have lived their entire lives up to this point just assuming that a specific fruit or vegetable is supposed to taste bitter, tangy, or spicy, having no fucking idea that all this time, they've been allergic to this plant. Because how would they have known? You learn what things taste like by tasting them, nobody's going to tell you that bananas are supposed to be one of the mildest flavours out there. And people already eat so many things that taste hot, bitter, tangy and tart! Because they like how that kind of thing tastes like!

You can just happily much on a plant, thinking "ah, this angry plant tastes sharp because it hates me. Much like all the other sharp angry plants that people eat because they like the sharp", and it wouldn't cross their mind to think that the plant just hates you, specifically.